Topicality and asymmetry between pronoun production and interpretation

Despite much research on pronoun production and interpretation, whether the two processes are affected by the same preferences is controversial. The debate has primarily been limited to the question of whether pronoun production, like comprehension, is influenced by the likelihood of the speaker re-mentioning the referent, and the findings on this point are mixed. This study takes a new approach to the debate by reanalysing how topicality influences null and overt pronoun production and comprehension in Mandarin in two previous studies. The results show that the production of both pronoun types was influenced by grammatical role and/or topicality, whereas their interpretation was influenced by production and next-mention biases. These findings provide novel evidence for the production-interpretation asymmetry proposed in the Bayesian model of Kehler and colleagues, extending it to multiple pronoun types and to a typologically distinct language.